Write a pay case and rehearse the conversation before you have it.
Pick the pay conversation you are actually going to have. It could be a job offer you already hold or a raise you plan to ask for. Then set aside about 45 minutes: 20 minutes to write the case, 15 for the role-play and 10 to revise. This project brings together five parts from earlier lessons: your market range, your view of the whole package, your answer to the salary question, your counter-offer, and your plan for raising pay with your manager. Because the conversation is real, you will have said the whole thing out loud at least once before you are in the room.
At the end you will have two things. The first is a one-page pay case. The second is a recording of a role-play, with a friend playing your manager or the hiring manager, and a script you have revised afterwards.
A pay case is a written one-page summary of why you should be paid what you are asking. It holds your evidence, your ask and your fallbacks. The evidence has four parts, and each should fit in a few lines.
Role now is one or two sentences on what you do today. Give the most space to anything that has grown since you were hired or since your last review. Results are three to five lines, each one a specific outcome with a number. Scope growth is what you do now that was not in your original job description. Market data is two or three data points from Lesson 7.1, Find your market rate from real sources, each with its source and date.
If you are preparing for a job offer, replace results at your current job with what you will bring to the new role. Use the new role's own listing as one of your data points.
Joanne leads customer operations. She is carried over from Lesson 7.5, Ask for a raise or promotion with a case, and all her figures are examples. Under role now, she writes that she leads customer operations with a team of seven, which includes returns, and that she took returns over in June. Her results are that she grew the team from four to seven, trained three hires, took over the returns process, and cut the complaints backlog from about two weeks to three days. Her scope growth is people management and the returns process. For market data, she uses the range for operations managers in two recruiter guides, plus MyCareersFuture listings for similar team sizes.
Make one specific ask and give the reason for it. Joanne asks for an increase from S$5,000 to S$5,400 a month. Her reason is the growth in her scope and the market rate for operations managers with teams of this size.
Add two fallbacks under the main ask. A fallback ask is a backup request for when the main ask is not possible. As Lesson 7.2 explained, a good one costs the company less than base pay. Joanne's two fallbacks are a title change to operations manager and a formal review at six months instead of twelve. Write yours down now so you are not making them up under pressure.
Script the first two minutes. For a raise, that means opening the topic, summarising your results and making the ask. Here is Joanne's opening, paraphrased. She thanks her manager for the time and says she wants to discuss her pay and role ahead of this year's review. She says her scope has grown a lot over the past year, and that she wants to walk the manager through it and make a request.
Then prepare for the two answers you are most likely to hear. The first is "there's no budget this year." Lesson 7.5 suggested asking what would need to be true, and agreeing a date to come back to it. The second is "not yet" or "you're not quite ready." For that one, ask what specifically is missing, and whether you can agree how it will be measured. Write a line or two for each response.
Give a friend your case and a short brief: be fair but not easy, and use one of the two hard answers at some point. Record the role-play on your phone.
When you listen back, notice where you hesitated, over-explained or apologised. Also check what you did after the ask. You may have stopped talking, or you may have rushed to fill the silence, which is the habit Lesson 4.3, Open with an ambitious number and a reason, warned about. Most people find the recording uncomfortable to listen to. That discomfort is the point, because every hesitation you hear now is one your manager will not hear later.
Revise the weak parts of the script, and run the role-play again if there is time. You are finished when you have:
a one-page case covering role, results with numbers, scope growth and sourced market data one specific ask with a reason two fallback asks a script for the first two minutes written responses to "no budget" and "not yet" a recording of at least one role-play notes on what you changed afterwards
Complete your case, run the recorded role-play with your friend, and revise the script wherever it felt weak.
Write your one-page case, record a role-play, and rewrite the parts of the script that felt weak.
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